This is Scott Amyx with today’s Climate Change Flash Briefing.
Recent poll from the George Mason Center on Climate Change Communication in conjunction with Yale indicated that 72 percent of respondents said that climate change is personally important, which marks an all-time high since the poll began in 2008. 69 percent of Americans are worried about climate change and 65 percent believe that climate change is affecting the weather in the U.S.
The lead researcher commented, “American have been subjected to an aggressive climate change disinformation campaign for decades. The fact that most American can see the effects of climate change with their own eyes is one of the reasons why more and more Americans are seeing the disinformation campaign for what it is, an effort to deceive us.” This, of course, has been the proactive lobbying by oil & gas special interests to discredit climate change science. Politicians who are the beneficiaries of generous campaign contributions have become the mouthpieces for the fossil fuel industry, as witnessed, by the recent White House nomination of former oil lobbyist David Bernhardt to run the Department of Interior in order to open up public U.S. lands to oil and gas drilling and mining.
In another poll by the AP and the University of Chicago, they also found high percentages of Americans accept the science of climate change.
However, the polls also show that many lack understanding on how serious the issue is or what it will take to reverse the trend. Many economists and policymakers support carbon tax but material change to climate change will not happen until we can channel capital to large-scale clean, renewable energy.
When asked if respondents would be willing to pay an extra dollar a month on their utility bill to combat climate change, 57 percent agreed. But when asked to pay $10 a month, the support dropped to 28 percent. The willingness to pay and the sense of urgency among the general public is still lacking according to researchers. So how can we convey the seriousness and urgency for the public to take action?
Stay tuned next time to find out why polar bears are terrorizing a Russian island town.
